cover image The Can Opener Gourmet: More Than 200 Quick and Delicious Recipes Using Ingredients from Your Pantry

The Can Opener Gourmet: More Than 200 Quick and Delicious Recipes Using Ingredients from Your Pantry

Laura L. Karr, Laura Karr. Hyperion Books, $16.95 (288pp) ISBN 978-0-7868-8749-1

The Can Opener Gourmet relies on a simple premise: canned food is convenient, cheap and underutilized. Who knew that a credible beef stroganoff could be made with little more than the contents of three cans? Or that a decent ginger-carrot soup could be concocted without whole carrots? The stroganoff uses canned roast beef, and the soup relies on-no kidding-four jars of carrot baby food. While her recipes are inarguably quick and easy, Karr's reliance on powdered spices, tinned meats and bottled juices can become a little unnerving. Really, how hard is it to slice a piece of chicken? Fresh ingredients are often almost as convenient as canned, and their taste is incomparably better. Karr's prose is chatty and generous, and her use of shortcuts is ingenuous, but in the end her bookmight remind readers of a slightly dotty aunt who's been saving the same piece of tinfoil for five years-and whose dinner invitations they often decline.